Semitic Dwarves

John-Rhys Davis played Gimli with a Scottish accent in The Lord of the Rings films, thus feeding into the analogue of Dwarves as stout Scottish coal miners transferred to fantasyland that has wormed its way into so much fantasy since the 1970s.  In Tolkien, the analogue is a false friend: there’s not much of the Scots in Gimli, Gloin, or Thorin; Tolkien didn’t draw from Dungeons & Dragons but from a wide range of myth and folklore.  Scandinavian dwarfs served as the primary source for the characteristics of Tolkien’s Dwarves.

Their language, however, was not derived from Old Norse, but from Hebrew.  “Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic”, Tolkien said in regards to Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves.  In other interviews Tolkien also drew connections between the dwarves and Jews on a vaguer level.  On the cultural side of things, those references cast Dwarvish history in a new light: the fall of Moria roughly mirrors the fall of Jerusalem and subsequent diaspora—leading to the rather tough imagining of Balin as a Zionist.  Certainly the secretive names and language Dwarves speak exclusively amongst themselves also fits. 

Yet we also have the sticky issue of the various signifiers for Dwarves taken from Scandinavian mythology leading to unfortunate connotations when explicitly linked with Jews: their beards, large noses, aggressiveness and, above all, love of gold (take a look at this article for a rundown on how Tolkien’s representation of the Dwarves may well have reflected latent anti-Semitism in British society).  How much one is connected with the other is difficult to say; it seems, at least, that Tolkien created a link that was never really there by associating Dwarves with medieval stereotypes of Jewish people.  The stereotypes are both positive and negative within the text, and ultimately, in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien portrays Dwarves in a positive light.  Whether this has anything to do with Jews is another matter; it’s too easy to map direct correspondences between the author’s creation and his or her attitudes.  In this case, the Norse-Jewish connections with the Dwarves may be perfectly irrelevant when considering their actual portrayal in the text—and we already know Tolkien’s own thoughts on anti-semitism:

I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. (Letter to German Publishers, 1938)

Andrzej Sapkowski makes the connection much more obvious in his Witcher series of short stories and novels.  It’s perhaps worthwhile to note that dwarfs also feature in Slavic folklore and mythology, but Sapkowski’s inspirations are far more modern.  In the world of the Witcher, Dwarves act as moneylenders, live in ghettos, suffer gross discrimination and have to endure a pogrom every once in a while.  It’s a somewhat different picture from the stout and proud Dwarvish warriors of Middle Earth, mainly because it’s rooted in the 19th and 20th century instead of a cross-cultural medieval milieu.

All things considered, I’m rather intrigued by Michael Chabon’s complaint how few could imagine “Jews with swords” without laughing when he set out to write Gentlemen of the Road.  There were already Jews with axes bopping around at least two popular adventure novels beforehand, even if the correlation wasn’t exact.